Riley and Tim dropped the bag into the Apache’s stern. Puny as it was, the body made a solid thud on impact.
“I see,” Cooper said.
“Is there no official inquiry?”
“No.”
“That’s irregular.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus, you fucking spook,” Little said, “what are you asking? What do you expect me to do?”
“That’s better, Eugene,” Cooper said.
“What do you mean, ‘That’s better’? I’m not doing you any favors. I’ve got a reputation to uphold, a law enforcement code to observe. What is it, anyway? Somebody OD out at that godforsaken beach club of yours? Christ-you probably shot the poor bastard. Whatever it is, I refuse to be a party to any foul play.”
“Eugene,” Cooper said, “I’ve got a body here. I need you to dispose of it. I need it done, no questions asked. I’m about forty-five minutes away. I was thinking maybe you could send a car to the marina. You know something? You might like this one. Something odd about the circumstances-burn marks like you’ve never seen.”
“You-you actually expect me to just send a car out?” Eugene paused, and Cooper could hear the sounds of him fidgeting at his desk. “What do you mean by odd?”
“You’ll see.”
The fidgeting stopped. “I’m incinerating it, burning the body,” Eugene said, “that’s something I’ll need to do on my own time. Outside of my normal duties.”
“Like some sort of freelance coroner?”
“Spare me-I know how you work. Let me guess. I don’t do you this little favor, you make a few calls, and pretty soon somebody’s looking into things. Things I don’t want anybody looking into. That about how it goes?”
“Not bad,” Cooper said. “How much?”
“How much? Well, considering the irregularity-”
“Five hundred.”
“Five? Fine.”
“Have a cab waiting for me at the fishing terminal.”
Cooper flipped the phone into the boat. It landed on the cushion of the driver’s seat. From the dock, Riley brushed off his hands with two neat claps, grinned, and said, “All right then, mon. Live slow and nice.”
Cooper raised a hand without waving and climbed into his boat.
It intrigued him that the cabby didn’t even flinch as Cooper climbed into the taxi, body bag slung over his shoulder, and said, “The morgue.” There was only a friendly nod and a flip of the gearshift.
One night, bored under the safety lights at the beach club, Cooper had taken a hard look at a list of employees on the government payroll of the United States Virgin Islands. Abusing the privilege of his rather lofty security clearance, he’d snatched from Charlotte Amalie City Hall a list of active USVI government staff, and, reading the list on the beach, noticed an American expatriate employed as the medical examiner. Knowing the population of the U.S. Virgin Islands was eighty-seven percent local and thirteen percent expatriate, Cooper also knew a fairly low percentage of the expats ever wound up on the government payroll. He figured there must have been one hell of a story behind this Eugene Little.
Cooper got his hands on Little’s job application and medical credentials. A couple days later, with nothing much to do, he made some phone calls to the mainland, found that nobody named Eugene Little had graduated from the schools claimed in the credentials, and, working off a gritty photocopy of Little’s driver’s license, he checked the handful of federal databases to which he had access. Using his PowerBook’s moody wireless modem, Cooper took his time searching and ultimately found a bonanza of dirt on the expat coroner.
Eugene had been born with the name Roger Ignatius Holmby, and under that identity was wanted on ten counts ranging from medical fraud to manslaughter, with warrants outstanding for failure to show for multiple arraignments. Holmby, a former plastic surgeon, had killed two patients and left at least fifteen with some form of permanent disability. Once charged, he’d skipped out on a half-million-dollar bond. Cooper thinking that there was probably an army of bounty hunters going after ten percent of that.
After a while Cooper paid the man a visit, taking his Apache over to St. Thomas. He caught him around noon, asked if Little was free for lunch, Cooper buying-courtesy of his fairly bottomless Agency expense account. They grabbed a couple of sandwiches at the deli across the street from the morgue and had a nice talk, Cooper telling him, “Your secret’s safe with me, Ignatius. You don’t have a worry in the world.” Watching those nervous twitches, the facial tic going nuts, Cooper laid out what he’d found on him, and told the man he might get a call someday, and that when he did, he should take the call.
You don’t just walk in through the front door carrying a stiff,” Eugene said, hurriedly escorting Cooper to the examination table.
Cooper dumped the body bag on the steel table and went for his wallet. There were three hundreds and five fifties inside; he came out with two of the hundreds and put the wallet back in his pocket.
“Two hundred bucks is all I have on me,” he said, extending his hand. Eugene grabbed the money. “I don’t want to see this on the local news, so do it right and do it now. You’ll get the rest when I hear nothing about this for three weeks.”
“Bastard,” Eugene said, backing off a step, keeping a cushion between himself and Cooper. “Coming in here trying to palm your murder off-hey, look at that.”
He moved in closer, getting a tight look at Cooper’s face.
“Smell bothering you? Not so tough after all, eh?”
Eugene looked at the body bag.
“Why don’t we take a look? See what we’ve got here. Check out this odd set of circumstances. Think you can take it, big man?”
Eugene emitted a piercing giggle, his face mere inches from Cooper’s. His breath reeked of stale coffee and vomit. Cooper thought for a moment, and decided that since he’d hooked Eugene’s curiosity, he may as well put the coroner to work.
Attempting to hold his breath as a shield against the combined stench of Eugene’s breath, Roy’s body from the beach, and the overwhelming reek of formaldehyde, he said, “Let’s have a look.”
At Eugene’s urging, Cooper helped him remove the body from the bag. The coroner flipped on an examination light and pointed it at the body’s torso. In the bright light, the sores appeared worse to Cooper than they had on the beach. Some of them were six, eight inches in diameter, ragged tufts of raw flesh with bubbly blisters around the rim. The victim’s body looked as though it had been stabbed repeatedly by the hot end of a six-foot cigar.
Cooper watched as Eugene did the exam, noticing that Eugene would surreptitiously peer over at him from time to time, maybe waiting for Cooper to say something, maybe trying to figure something out about him. Eugene, my man, Cooper thought, you are one odd duck.
Eugene pulled off what was left of the soiled blue shirt covering the body and set it aside, leaving the rest of the man’s upper body exposed-its waterlogged skin, the sores, blisters, and what looked like a series of exit wounds: jagged rips in the man’s flesh, clearly torn by bullets. On both legs the jeans, shredded to the knee, looked as though they had caught on something; below the jeans were the compound fractures, one on each shin. Cooper could see that both ankles were severely swollen and probably broken.
The stench of rotting flesh became overwhelming as Eugene, seemingly oblivious, gave the corpse a complete once-over, lifting hands, feet, head, arms and legs, examining the skin, the sores, the fingernails, teeth, eyes, soles of the feet, the numerous bullet wounds. He made muffled grunts as he worked. Cooper stood two or three feet back, giving Eugene a zone in which to roam around the body.
At length Eugene backed off, opened a drawer, came out with an aerosol can, shot it in bursts around the room, put it back, opened another drawer and came out with a Polaroid camera. One body part at a time, he popped a series of pictures-each time pulling out the picture, waving it once or twice, setting it on the countertop, then moving in for another. He had a speed that came only with practice, Eugene working the camera with his right hand, prepping whatever section of the body he was photographing with the other, Cooper thinking this felonious, malpracticing quack had gone ahead and found his groove down here in the islands.